For Christine, my mum,
who makes everything better.
A rolling stone gathers no moss
Old English Proverb
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
To attract the right sort of chap, a woman must exude allure yet remain virtuous. Modesty is necessary if she intends to receive a proposal of marriage!
Matilda Beam’s Guide to Love and Romance, 1955
I have done many unwise things in my life. And while sex with the new neighbour less than two hours after meeting him is definitely not the most ridiculous of those things, it’s quite high up on the list. As is losing my contact lenses during the mistimed throes of our clumsy copulation, leaving myself blind in his bed this sticky-hot July morning.
Stupid, delicious pear cider, I cannot resist thee.
Somewhere in the room my phone gives a muffly buzz. Shit, I bet I’m late. The big meeting is today and I swore to Summer that I absolutely, definitely would not be late.
I can’t quite remember my neighbour’s name, though I have a strong feeling that it’s Jim . . . Or maybe Timothy. Whatever he’s called, his partially hidden face is snoring away beside me, blissfully oblivious to my presence. If I had the power of sight I would just find my clothes and creep across the corridor without having to acknowledge him in any way. At least until the inevitable bumping into him in the hall bit, at which point I’d simply shriek and leg it. But without contacts in I can only see about six inches in front of me.
‘Wake up . . . ’ Jim? Timothy? ‘ . . . boy,’ I croak, nudging neighbour’s burly shoulder with my elbow. ‘Rise and shine! It’s a magical new day and all that jazz. Come on. Time to get up now.’
He mumbles something that sounds like ‘mnnneblurp’, grabs my hand and plonks it onto his willy, clearly hopeful of a repeat performance.
No, ta.
I remove my hand from his junk and use it to punch his arm.
Jumping upright, he blinks once as if stunned by the sight of a real live woman in his bed. I squint at him. His brawny, muscular body looks oddly out of proportion with his head. What a tiny head he has. I probably thought it was a fascinating head last night. Everything’s fascinating after that much booze. I disguise my What the blazing arse was I thinking? grimace with an extravagant yawn.
Whipping up the blanket, neighbour discovers that I’m still naked. He smirks, sliding closer. ‘Oh, hellooo, Jess from next door,’ he says, wetting his pale lips with his pale tongue. ‘Do you have a . . . cup of sugar I could borrow?’
He gazes at me for a moment, eyes narrowed, top lip lifted in a half-grin. I suspect he thinks it’s a sexually alluring facial arrangement, but in reality it gives him the aura of a man restraining a fart.
I do an army roll over to the other side of the bed.
‘Sugar,’ he cracks again, beaming. ‘D’y geddit? Ha-ha. Like a euphemism? For sex? Ha-ha. Ha.’
Good God. My standards – which, let’s face it, were never mega high – have really dropped recently. First Mickey the Butcher, who wasn’t even really a butcher, and then Rupert, who only loved me because I let him take sepia-filtered Instagram pics of my feet. And now this guy, whose name eludes me.
‘Hey . . . fella,’ I improvise. ‘I’m so sorry to wake you, but I’m late and probably in trouble with my boss. I’ve lost my contact lenses and I’m completely short-sighted without them. Would you mind helping find my clothes and walking me back to my flat?’
He stretches his thick arms above his head and raises an eyebrow. ‘Where we’re going . . . we don’t need clothes.’
‘I think we do. I really think we do.’
‘I’d like it much better if you just stayed naked.’
‘That’s very flattering. But I think I’d like you much better if you did me a lovely favour and found my stuff.’
He sighs and slithers out of the bed, grabs some stripy cotton boxers and a creased vest from a half-unpacked suitcase and pulls them on. It only takes him a moment to find my clothes, which have been artlessly flung onto his computer desk. My knickers are curled around the handle of an errant mug. He hands them over and watches as I dress.
Yanking up my skinny jeans, I pull the zipper before fastening the safety pin that’s there in place of the button I lost last week.
Everything is so blurry. I really must remember to start carrying a spare pair of glasses in my bag. I must also remember to start carrying a bag.
‘So, do you want my number, Jess?’ neighbour asks, linking his arm with mine and leading me slowly out of his bedroom, down a hall and through a curry-scented kitchen area. ‘I feel a real rapport here. Romantic potential, like. I’d love to get to know you more.’
We trail through a sparse living room, the shockingly bright rays of sunshine blaring through the window making me squint.
‘Thanks and all,’ I say, sidestepping a stack of unpacked boxes on the floor, ‘but I’m not really the “getting to know you more” type. I mean, maybe I’ll get round to doing the whole relationship thing in twenty years or so when my body’s gone to shit and most of the fun of life has already been had. But right now? Nope. Ta for the offer, though.’
‘Right, yeah, totally agree, totally agree,’ he says as we leave his flat. ‘I’m exactly the same. Fucking hate relationships. Relationships can go suck long balls for all I care. Ha. Listen to this: I like ships, yeah? But wanna know what my least favourite type of ship is?’
‘A relationship.’
‘You got it! Ha-ha. So you being all independent lady and that, well, it could make us the perfect match, when you think about it. Something to consider?’
‘Hmm-hmm.’
We plod out into the communal hall and down the corridor for the twenty seconds it takes us to reach my flat. I fish inside my back pocket for the door key.
‘Thanks a lot for helping me home.’
‘Oh, always happy to accompany a pretty young thang like yourself.’
‘Right.’ I nod. ‘Cool, well, take care then. Probably see you around the flats sometime!’
I wave and give him my goodbye smile. He does not leave.
‘Um, so yeah, I’ll see you around sometime!’ I repeat.
Still he does not leave.
Why doesn’t he leave?
‘You know, Jess,’ he says thoughtfully, thumb hooked in the band of his boxers, crotch thrusting slightly in my direction. ‘I think you should at least take my number for neighbourly purposes. Like, in case you get burgled or so
mething. Or locked in. Or locked out. Or maybe one day you might need some help with your tinned goods shopping bags. Or what if, right, what if you’re indoors alone one day and your washing machine just breaks? Explodes, like KABLAM, flooding all of your things and you need a helping hand? Or what if – ’ his nostrils flare slightly – ‘what if you find yourself feeling lonely, eh? Very lonely, but of course no one knows how lonesome you are because you pretend your job at the B&Q warehouse fulfils you and you put on your glad face at the Wednesday-night poker tournaments, but underneath the charade you’re bored and alone and in dire, wretched need of soft, comforting human warmth . . . ’
Whoa.
Seeing such raw desperation for companionship makes me feel extra grateful that I have no such urges. The art of a successful one-night stand is dead simple: Do Not Emotionally Attach, OK? I also find this to be an excellent motto for life in general.
Poor guy, with that shrunken head as well.
‘All right, then,’ I say, feeling bad for him. ‘I’ll take that number. Just in case my washing machine does, you know, explode.’
Grinning, he crosses the personal space threshold and hovers by my shoulder, watching as I enter the number he recites.
And then it gets to the bit where I’m supposed to type his name into my phone.
I scrunch up my eyes, hand poised over the screen.
Jim or Timothy?
Jim or Timothy?
If I get this wrong, it could be considered a genuinely skanky moment.
‘Um, Jessica,’ he mumbles, smile fading, ‘do you not know my name?’
I snort and do an over-the-top eye roll. ‘I know it,’ I say breezily. ‘Obviously I know your name!’
Jim or Timothy? It’s a simple fifty-fifty call, Jess. Make the call.
‘Obviously your name is Jjjjiiiiim . . . ’
His brow dips.
‘ . . . mmmothy?’
He does a tiny gasp.
‘Did you just call me Jimothy?’
‘Errrrrr.’
‘My name is Paul.’
He throws me a deeply offended look, mutters ‘slapper’ under his breath and stomps off back down the hall.
Paul. Pea-head Paul. Of course.
Chapter Two
Being late is never, ever fashionable.
Matilda Beam’s Good Woman Guide, 1959
Before I get a chance to turn the key in the lock, the front door is yanked open by my boss, flatmate and Celebrity Rear of the Year Runner-Up 2011, Summer Spencer.
‘Did the new neighbour just call you a slapper?’ she asks, observing his retreating form.
‘I prefer sexually cheerful.’
‘I suppose that’s one way to put it.’ She raises a fashionably thick, dark eyebrow. ‘How are you even late, Jess? Seriously. Today of all days? Possibly the biggest day of my – of our – entire career? We’ve got to leave for London in less than half an hour and you’re a mess, quelle surpreeeeze.’
Mr Belding, our tiny black and white kitten, winds his way around my legs. Picking him up, I hold him close, like a protective shield against Summer’s grump bullets.
‘I know.’ I grimace. ‘Sorry, Sum. I did mean to have an early night. I even wrote it on my hand. Look!’ I hold out my palm to show her the smudged blue biro scrawl reading Have early night! ‘I just . . . after you left, the beer garden got dead busy and everyone was playing Twister and it was so sunny and warm and they do that lovely pear cider . . . ’ I rub my eyes. ‘I can barely see right now, I lost my conta—’
‘Yeah, I’m sure it’s all another delightful adventure in the amazing responsibility-free world of Jessica Beam.’ She blows the air out through her cheeks. ‘But maybe you can tell me on the train down south? Just shower, will you?’ Leaning forward, she gives me a delicate little sniff. ‘You reek.’
‘Do I have time for a quick run first? Twenty minutes max? Just to clear away the cobwebs? I feel a bit pukey.’
‘No! Jesus, Jess.’
Summer holds her arms out to take Mr Belding back. He scrambles up, his paws clinging desperately to my top. She narrows her eyes in deep suspicion.
‘Hmm. I don’t get why he likes you so much when I’m the one who spends so much time with him. Styles him, manages his career.’
Mr Belding is a burgeoning Internet star. A model cat. Summer dresses him up in little outfits and together they pose for pictures, which she posts online for likes and retweets.
I pointedly eye the specially made feline top hat that Mr Belding is wearing. ‘I don’t know,’ I say innocently. ‘Maybe he just wants to grapple back a little creative control?’
Summer tuts. ‘Oh, it’s all such a laugh, isn’t it? Just hurry up, will you?’ She sighs loudly, spins on her heel and clicks back across the hardwood floor, closing the living-room door more forcefully than usual.
She’s so moody lately.
I grasp the dado rail tightly and feel along it until I reach my cosy, cupboard-sized bedroom, where I finally put on my old faithful tortoiseshell glasses.
‘Praise be!’ I cry to the ceiling as sight is restored.
Plugging my iPhone into the docking station, I flick on my favourite rock anthems playlist – which never fails to get me in a brilliant mood – and speedily pull off last night’s clothes, chucking them in the general direction of the already overflowing laundry basket. Really must get round to putting some washing on.
Tomorrow.
Definitely tomorrow.
Jumping into the shower, I do the fastest shampoo I’ve ever done because Summer has already used this week’s quota of hot water for the twice-daily holistic baths she’s been reading about on goop and the water is turning into icicles before it even hits me. From downstairs she yells:
‘Double-brush your teeth, Jess. Maybe triple.’
‘Absolutely!’ I call back in a shivery voice, immediately reaching outside the shower screen for my toothbrush and getting to work on an extreme mouth cleansing.
‘Don’t forget to wear underwear today,’ Summer shouts again, this time from outside my bedroom door. I half expect her to suddenly appear in the bathroom, Ninja-Cat style, to make sure I’ve cleaned behind my ears.
‘Definitely will wear pants!’ I call back.
I wonder if it’s normal to be a little bit afraid of your best friend? Not like in a murdery way, of course, but sometimes, when Summer gives me this stony-eyed, ice-cold look, my heart plummets to my knees. If I’m extra tiddly or extra flirty or extra gobby, Summer’s frosty stare comes out, and that’s when I know I should probably rein in it. Every so often I try to get sensible. I go cold turkey on fun: stop with the boy crazy, end the boozing, press pause on eating only Pot Noodles with a side order of McCoy’s crisps and a pudding of Haribo for dinner, and start going with her to the horrendous Saturday spinning class and taking my makeup off before I go to sleep and trying to understand that fashion is about much more than which sparkly top makes my boobs look the most awesome. I usually manage fine for a few days. But then, soon enough, life feels quite grey and empty without a party going on, and whether I like it or not I’m back to what Summer refers to as my ‘ridiculous Jessica Beam adventures’. She reckons I’m still living life like I’m eighteen instead of twenty-eight, but what’s so wrong with that? As Tulisa Contostavlos sang so soulfully, ‘we’re young, we’re young, we’re young’. And as I always say: life is too blummin’ short not to have a giggle while you can.
‘Jess! Get a move on!’
‘Five mins!’
I try to super-speedily shave my legs, which is a grave error of judgement and leads to unsightly shin cuts that sting like a mofo. I hop about and mutter all the swear words until the pain subsides.
A sweet prog-rock keyboardist I saw for a few weeks last year asked me why on earth I cared so much about what Summer Spencer thought. And I told him exactly why: Summer was there for me at a time when no one else was. Which sounds dramatic, I know, but it’s a true fact. Because when I was eighte
en my mum, Rose, died. I was in my first year at Manchester University and Summer was on the same English Lit course as me. When I’d failed to turn up to lectures for three weeks, she came to my halls to find out why I’d disappeared. To be fair, up until then I’d been helping her with the assignments (I still don’t know how she got on the course – she thought George Eliot was a dude), and she’d been getting rubbish marks in my absence. But still, out of everyone, Summer was the only person who’d even noticed I was missing.
When she discovered me holed up in my room eating an undercooked frozen garlic bread, doing a Rosemary & Thyme DVD marathon and swigging shit boxed wine directly from the plastic tap on the box, she said to me, ‘This is the saddest scene I’ve ever witnessed. Put on some lipstick, let’s go out and get ridiculously fucked.’ Which, at the time, I thought was the worst, most insensitive idea in the world. But as it turned out, going out and having fun was the most effective distraction I’d had in weeks. From then on we were inseparable. Summer took me under her wing and introduced me to her crowd of cool friends, who eventually became my crowd of cool friends too.
I’d never met anyone like Summer Spencer before. Even at eighteen years old she was the most confident, popular person in most rooms. She’d wear stylish new hairdos and clothes before they even hit the magazines and always had an innate sense of where the best parties were going on. The fact that she wanted to hang out with me was supremely flattering. Still is. And I didn’t mind writing the odd essay for her, or even doing what eventually turned out to be most of her dissertation – I loved the books we were studying, and a stressed-out Summer was nowhere near as much fun. And I’ll never forget that if she hadn’t dragged me out of my bedroom that day, I’d probably still be in there now, going mouldy.
Outside the bathroom door I hear the growly opening riffs of one of my favourite Led Zeppelin songs blare out of the iPhone. I can’t resist a quick air-guitar moment before rinsing the conditioner off my head.
So, after graduation, Summer and I lost touch for a few years. She was super busy in New York trying to make it as a fashion designer and dating Anderson Warner – he of the twinkly eyes and MTV movie-award fame – and I was travelling across Europe, not really trying to make it as anything but having some pretty epic adventures along the way. Later, when Summer’s fashiony dreams didn’t quite come off and Anderson chucked her for a South Korean model, she came back to the UK and set up a blog called Summer in the City.
The Vintage Guide to Love and Romance Page 1